Action Research Jinx

It happened again. Out of 3 students that should have attended the Drawing Reading Group, only one made it, delaying my action research project once again.

As the Reading Groups are optional, I cannot in fact attendance. Besides, I think the excuses were absolutely genuine. But the fact that we cannot seem to keep to the meetings is sending me alarm bells. I have to take action on this because if I don't, I see these sessions disappearing in the ether of student's workload.

I have emailed the students, letting them know how useful the two sessions (out of 6!) we have had so far were and gave them the possibility to reschedule, rather than roll the 'text' to the next session. We already have an interesting backlog of material to talk about, but the difficulty will be JG, who lives in Sheffield and LL who's part time and has a 2 year old daughter and demanding teaching hours.

If it happens a third time, I will have to think about my action research project boundaries, which are already very tight (only 3 sessions and 3 students!). This lack of attendance perhaps shows an additional problem I hadn't considered when looking at the research context: it is the freedom of the sessions that might be a problem rather than the other way around. But I guess I will not be able to find the true causes of the problem until I give the preliminary questionnaire to the students.

If we cannot rearrange the session, I will post the ethics and questionnaire forms to the students with SAE envelopes to make sure they send them back to me. At least that way I will have something to start my work.